Confessions of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon. Cap Lesesne

to you, or because you’re lucky enough to have a role model. For me, all three conditions held, though early on, I was aware of only the last of these. My father, John Lesesne (luh-SAYN), was a doctor (now retired), an old-school internist who made house calls in the upper-middle-class suburbs of Detroit, where I grew up in the late sixties, the eldest of six kids. His was the kind of practice, almost obsolete now, where he treated and cared for two, often three, generations of the same family. He was an allergist, specializing in asthma. Sometimes I would go on house calls with him. While Dad paid his visit, I sat in the car, curbside, scanning the windows of the home to see if I could spot him and maybe get a glimpse of what was going on inside, but it was not out of fascination with medicine; it was the fascination of a son for what his father does, a child intrigued by the grown-up world. That’s it. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Now and then I’d bike by his office and poke in for a visit or, when I got older, stop by St. John’s Hospital on Mack Avenue. I had no idea these latter visits would benefit me years later: Because I associated hospitals with Dad’s presence, they always felt like places of warmth, even invitation, sanctuaries where people went to get well. For me, a hospital was never the dark, institutional warren of hallways and machines that terrifies most people. It was Dr. John Lesesne facing a wheezing little boy sitting on a table. “Now take a slow, deep breath through the mouth,” my father would urge in his Charleston accent, soft and calm, then place the cup of his stethoscope to the boy’s chest.

      Proud as I was of Dad, though, as highly regarded as he was in the community, there’s another enduring image I have of him, equally unshakable.

      It’s of him not there.

      Because he was always working. Frequently he came home too late for dinner. He would do anything for his patients. He made a good living. I could not respect a man more. But he was anchored in one place, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a bucolic Midwestern suburb of Detroit, and he would be there for life.

      As a kid, I dreamed privately that I was destined for more exotic things.

      

      Throughout my childhood, everyone around me, particularly my friends, seemed to be athletic. I was a klutz at every sport I tried. Rotten at basketball, awful at football and baseball; my hand-eye coordination for sports was terrible. (If someone then had made a bet that my hands would one day be insured against career-threatening injury, so that if anything befell them, I would get $18,000 a month for the rest of my life, he would have made a fortune. ) I was the kid to beat up, though mostly I was clever enough to evade pummelings. My outlet was books – about history, foreign affairs, any culture different from mine. I had other diversions – quiet pursuits such as building models and sculpting with clay, those things that boys do if they’re not athletes – but mostly it was books. I read constantly. Thanks to these dramas about other places and times, I could dream vividly about the world beyond, and my desire to do something larger-than-life. My grandfather ran a trucking company, and I remember driving around with him through small towns scattered across the Midwest. We would travel to depots where his car-carrying trucks picked up automobiles from the General Motors plants in Flint and Pontiac, then delivered them to car dealers all over the eastern United States. I also remember Teamsters, smashed cars, and Grandpa, baseball bat in hand, once storming out of his car and threatening to kill anyone who would even think about intimidating his grandson.

      That was exciting.

      For a while I thought about going into the family trucking business. But I wanted something removed from Detroit. I was fairly certain my future would have the word international attached to it.

      In ninth grade, a school friend disappeared – gone, suddenly, to high school far from Grosse Pointe. A prep school in the mysterious East. While it offered a better education than where I was, its more seductive pull was its location: far away. It was just the adventure I ached for. I asked my parents about it. Dad had gone to public schools in South Carolina, Mom to an all-girls private school in Michigan. My father, in particular, was taken by his firstborn’s excitement about education and he issued me a challenge. “Work hard,” he said, “and I’ll pay for the best school you can get into.”

      Hard work didn’t daunt me: I was a diligent student, pulled good grades, woke up early and had jobs on the side – shoveling snow, cutting grass, hauling trash, scooping ice cream. I was fourteen and hungry, and now my hunger for the thrill of a new educational experience had a name to it: Andover.

      My first year away was brutal. Overwhelming, lonely, full of awkwardness. It was hard being far from home, at an all-male school, tough living in a dorm, and the courses were difficult. At least I was consistent, though: My first semester there I got a C in everything. I wasn’t exactly living up to the bargain I’d struck with my father.

      It was hardly any solace to me that getting creamed your first year at Phillips Academy Andover was pretty standard. The campus was gorgeous, pastoral and dreamy in that unsurpassable New England way, with rolling hills and redbrick Georgian buildings, giant shade trees and hockey rinks and a college-caliber library. But at night in the dorms, the school – that first year, anyway – seemed to me a place run by Eastern boys who exacted great pleasure in beating up a bewildered, bespectacled Midwestern outsider whenever they could.

      To counter that sometimes helpless feeling, I took up rowing. I knew almost nothing about it. But I’d been curious ever since Dad had told me that his best-conditioned patient was a man named Gus Valenti, who rowed.

      At the time, Gus Valenti was eighty-one years old.

      Since I was a loser at other sports, rowing made me feel a bit as if Andover was, if not my social haven, then at least an institution where I’d earned inclusion.

      As at so many prep schools and Ivy League universities, legacies – offspring of alumni, particularly the well-heeled ones – abounded at Andover. A well-circulated account of an alleged incident during my time there, involving one legacy in particular – from the most powerful family in America – impressed upon me a recurring life lesson: integrity.

      No family across the twentieth century has been more associated with Andover than the Bushes, from former president George Bush Sr. through his sons. In my class – class of ’73 – was Marvin Bush, probably the least well-known of the Bush boys; President George W. (several years ahead of me) and Florida governor Jeb also attended.

      In our first year, Marvin (I’d heard) was put on probation for some offense; I believe it was for having a beer in his room. Then, while on probation, Marvin allegedly did yet another thing he wasn’t supposed to, thereby violating his probation, which usually meant expulsion. The disciplinary committee convened, and a meeting was attended by students, faculty, administration, and trustees. At the time, George Bush Sr. was head of the Andover board of trustees. Many of the students assumed that, since Marvin’s father was head of the board, he’d be cut lots of slack. And, true to form, when the head of the student disciplinary committee stood, he announced that, in the matter of Marvin Bush and his violation of probation, the committee had decided to extend his period of probation. He was spared suspension or expulsion precisely (it seemed to everyone there) because he was a Bush.

      Then George Bush Sr. spoke up. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, addressing the student head of the disciplinary committee, “if you violate probation, is it customary for your probation to be extended?”

      It was a puzzling question since, as head of the trustees – not to mention a former Phillipian himself – he had to know the answer already.

      “Well, Mr. Bush … no,” said the student head of the disciplinary committee almost apologetically.

      “I want no preferential treatment for my boy,” said Mr. Bush, who then turned to face his son. “Marvin, go back to your room, pack your bag, you’re stepping down.”

      The story raced through the campus. If nothing else, life was getting more exciting.

      

      I rowed. And rowed.

      And rowed.

      I doubt there’s another sport or physical discipline where such a high percentage of participants will volunteer